'Where is all this leading?'

The following was originally posted over at Claire's place, as a comment to this post in which she comments on the ridiculous spectacle of the remaining field of Democratic presidential candidates trying without apology to out-Orwell each other in full view of everyone.  Included here are 1) my original comment, 2) a response from another commenter, and 3) my follow-up.

It seemed appropriate somehow to warehouse this exchange here as well.  (As a housekeeping choice, I've backdated it to the date of the comment, but otherwise it's as it appears there.)



ORIGINAL COMMENT

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Claire, first and foremost I hope you can find and keep your peace with the great Pandora’s Box that is the Internet. Heaven knows I still struggle as well…with the outrage fatigue, the “need” to know what stank the pernicious piddlewits are pimping today…against all the wonderful things that the same landscape still provides.

Playing with my kids helps–a lot–but the struggle remains. I do pretty well at the goal of living-free-being-the-best-revenge (and thank you once again and always, for your part in encouraging that), but boy, are there days…

Anyway, peace to you, Freedomista.

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I hate the fact that these tiresome, committed people are in any way living rent-free in my head, but I have to admit that the current ramp-up of Teh Stoopid does have me worried. It’s not that the depth of the ignorance, idiocy, or the unapologetic chutzpah is on its own shocking, although there are certainly days when I do have to marvel at what now passes for not just socially acceptable but even routine; rather, what I keep finding myself left with is the one overarching question which seems to have absolutely no good possible answer:

Where is all this leading?

Much ink has been spilled already, and rightly so, about the control zealotocracy increasingly demanding the unconditional surrender of every remaining vestige of individual sovereignty and freedom. Any honest assessment of the landscape makes it perfectly clear that it’s on, to these people: by any means necessary; only the result is acceptable; no law, ethics, or morality is any sort of impediment to the cause. The puppet masters set masses of people at each other’s throats–quite successfully–for increasingly trivial differences, and boy do the useful idiots know their narrative…if not so much how to defend or even really articulate it past the most sophomoric talking points. Rational discourse, even the most Pyrrhic forms of individual interposition, are becoming less and less possible by the day. And I’m sure it’s not me; the rate of acceleration of all this “let’s you and him fight” theater is well past tiresome, and into alarming.

Alarming because ultimately there’s got to be a reason for it. The real puppet masters may be evil in the purest sense of that word, but I cannot believe they are stupid. The comically hubristic antics we see each day, across the spectrum, must, at some level, serve a purpose. And with pretty much all the gloves coming off on every topic, by the day, the entirely reasonable question “what purpose is that?”…sits there, nagging.

As the saying goes, anybody who demands you give up the means of resistance, intends for you something he knows you would resist. Indeed. We’re seeing a fat lot of push for getting this thing (disarming the peasantry) done immediately. Why? What do these creeps know that we don’t?

Oh, sure, it could be something simple. Maybe it’s just covering for their sorry corrupt asses by misdirecting elsewhere. Insider knowledge of impending economic or social collapse. A hive-mind sense that their best opportunity for total domination is now, so strike with everything possible. Et cetera.

The thing is, the real puppet masters would seem to be above things like this. It reminds me of a comment I recall Claire making when talking about the increasing demands of the Total Surveillance State–the idea that you don’t go to the trouble to spy on everyone, everywhere, to catch mere criminals.

So what is it, then? Here we are, currently witnessing the most comically slipshod soft coup attempt I’ve ever even heard of, much less seen–this is stuff that would not be believable in fiction–and not only do the masses not seem to care about how embarrassingly bad it is and has been since even before Orange Man was elected, but more of the same is openly promised–and apparently cheered–going forward. The fainting-couch, Kabuki theater flavor of it all is so completely over the top, it would be tempting to think of it as freedom-lover agitprop…but frankly I don’t think any of us could have–would have–gone that far.

So again: what is it?

Eep. Apparently I needed to give vent to that. Like I said above, the struggle continues. 🙂



ANONYMOUS FROM FEB 10

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@Kevin Wilmeth

Imagine drones bought from Hobby Lobby dropping firebombs on the roofs of government buildings. Dropping them every week. Dropping them until government falls apart because it can’t defend the bureaucrats who are funding it. Then government stays persistently fallen apart throughout the next phase, in which every militia general tries to set themselves up as a new king. For your own good, of course.

The technological singularity shifting power to the individual is the thing the current politicians are unsuccessfully trying to prevent with their too-little too-late attempts to LARP the Soviet Union.

Only the goofballs are playing the LARP Soviet game, because the competent who in times past would be nobility can actually do the military math about swarm attacks. Even the US Navy did the math correctly, in Millennium Challenge 2002.

What is coming next is a lot more freedom. The whining from the 99% who are not libertarians is going to be epic.



FOLLOW UP COMMENT

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Anon 2/10, I hope you’re right. I hardly relish the idea of that sort of conflict, for several reasons (not least of which because I suspect you are right about strongmen stepping into any available gap), but good god, look at the state into which we have “progressed” thus far, at the insistence of these obnoxious people who seem so fully committed to forcing the issue no matter what. It’s not so much that they are making peaceful revolution impossible, as it is that they are increasingly making peaceful existence impossible.

I think that in the end I do share the faith that the peasantry, if it must, will find its ways of rising to the challenge, whether it’s riflemen “behind every blade of grass”, or the flash-mob drone swarm of the deplorables, or some other Hayduke-ian creativity none of us has thought of yet. Or all that, in combination…

It’s the days between here and there, that I’m dreading.

My pipe-dream hope is that someone, somewhere, figures out how to make a peaceful statement that makes the lunacy of the continued wolverine-poking so self-evidently obvious that even the most tone-deaf, chest-thumping wokester agitator can’t miss it, or ignore it. (In this regard, I miss Mike Vanderboegh, who had a real flair for pursuing this goal–this quest for peace via the dire warning.) This really doesn’t seem like it should be all that difficult–from the “live and let live, how fucking hard is that?” angle, through to “you really haven’t thought this through, have you, hipster brainiac?”…and yet here we are.

The only problem with improvising creativity, is that it is inherently reactive. (Maybe that’s where my faith comes from, that in a world gone sideways, free people will ultimately prove more creative than the planners of other people’s business.) We’re still living in a world of strategy, where these improvising, reactive traits haven’t been truly needed yet.

And maybe that’s why the “let’s you and him fight” crowd seems so incapable of grokking the stupidity of bringing their imposed reality to blows–they can only plan, not improvise. The strategy, on paper, may seem solid. Even the tactics–the planned tactics–may seem plausible. But at the point of action, the human tendency for creativity can, and usually does, intervene, and often in unintended ways. (“In any battle the first casualty is the battle plan.”) I dunno, it seems like most folks in Claire’s commentariat would have no problem seeing this result as obvious, but maybe the obnoxious polypragmatoi just…don’t. (After all, this crowd may have tried many different things to achieve their goals, over the nearly forty years I’ve been paying attention, but I can’t say that any of the methods I have seen truly qualify as creative.)

Hey, maybe we can glom on a bit to current trends, here. I’ve been enjoying some of the Babylon Bee’s satire titles lately, including this one, “Democrats Warn That American People May Tamper With Next Election”…in a similar way, maybe we can simply promise to interfere with their revolution. 🙂

Yo, Kroger. Is the craven coward thing paying off for you yet?

The following is addressed to the decision makers at Kroger / Fred Meyer, whoever you are and wherever you may be, who have now simply removed entirely gun and ammo counters, even from a store in Alaska, in response to partisan political pressure.  Let me be really clear here:  if you had a hand in promoting or making this happen--then "you" in what follows means you, personally.

Listening?  Good.  This part is important:

You are invertebrate, 

craven cowards.  

Get that?

Do you even know what the word craven means?  It really is not possible to use the word more literally.  Or more sincerely.

Harsh, you say?  Hell yes, what you've done is harsh.  Oh, me, you say?  Ha!  I'm just being honest.  It's not even comparable to say that I am responding in kind;  I am being far more polite than that.

Let's be clear about one other thing, too:

You chose this path.  

You did not have to, but you did anyway.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying the choice shouldn't have been yours to make.  It's your business, and I'll defend your right to make your own business decisions until my dying breath.  Even if those actions are spineless, contemptible, and misanthropic.  (Liberty does not require decency, or even mutual respect.)

But the flip side of the freedom to make your own choices, is that then you own them--at least in the eyes of decent people, who do not presume to mind the business of others.

And you do own this misanthropic abomination you now call policy.  You have chosen to hock a giant greenie at untold thousands of customers, quietly loyal to you for untold years, to the tune of untold millions of revenue dollars, across product lines going far beyond guns and ammo.  And you did it in despicably craven deference to a simple loud-mouthed mob, self-arrogated minders of other people's business, crusading with nearly comic religious fervor to forcibly impose prior restraint upon millions of people who have harmed no one.  (You are aware, I presume, that the public face of this lynch mob, prior to the transparent co-opting of its tragic celebrity by veteran partisan zealots, and its subsequent miraculous conversion into instant national gun policy experts, was best known for being unable to resist eating Tide Pods on a dare?)

You do understand, I presume, that their coercion tactics have been wildly successful on you thus far?  I mean, let's not mince words:  they told you what to do, and you could hardly heel-snap into line fast enough.

So, here are some questions for you, now that you've made this bed and have to lay in it.  Even if you're not real happy with me at the moment for being so honest and all, you really should consider what the answers are.  (Truth, and reality, do not require your agreement, nor even your consent.)

• Do you really believe that, having caved without any real effort at all on this demand, that they will leave you alone now?  Do you?  Because either you do, or you don't.  If you don't believe it, then what's the payoff supposed to be?  If you do believe they'll go away now that you've caved, then you're as stupid as you are spineless--and QED that's saying something.
• Do you actually buy the stank these meddlesome piddlewits are pimping?  I mean seriously:  this crowd talks as if they are selling their ideas on the basis of some sort of calculable performance, but try this experiment if you want to learn something:  ask any of these people, if they truly believe in this notion of performance, what their "tipping point" is--that point at which their chosen statistic or metric goes the other way and will cause them to agitate against forcible prior restraint, and for actual liberty.  Just watch what happens.
• Do you think we--both the actual "gunnies", and other liberty-loving types for whom guns may be unimportant but principle still is--will simply not notice what you've done?  The complete removal of the entire gun-and-ammo counter is actually an up-the-ante move from the more well-publicized decision to ignore state law and further restrict sales based on arbitrary age.  (In my local store, the age-restriction sign still hangs above the now-simply-not-there gun counter, mockingly.)  I suppose this idea shouldn't be that surprising, since you've so clearly chosen to throw us under the bus in preference to your new policy-shouting besties, but will your gamble pay off?
• Did you trade up, in spitting on people like me to welcome the hipster polypragmatoi?  Or did you maybe miscalculate and trade down?  If I were you, I'd pay attention to that.
• Do you even know how many of your customers you've pissed off, by pissing on?

You could have told the meddlesome nitwits to pound sand in a hundred ways, and you could have simply ignored them into the irrelevancy they so richly deserve in a hundred more.  You didn't.  You capitulated immediately, with not even an obvious objection, much less any meaningful resistance.

The right to make that choice was, and is, yours.  The right to call it out as contemptible, craven cowardice, and pure antipathy to your customers, is mine.  

And here's the final rub:

It was pointless.

Yes, pointless.  No good will come of it.  If you don't understand that yet, don't worry, you will some day.  (I suspect there is a lot you haven't yet figured out about political crusaders;  if you think I'm a pain to deal with here, just you wait.)  

In the meantime, ponder this last question:

What will you do, 

when you figure out 

you've been played 

for nothing?

The late Mike Vanderboegh--a much missed voice in this tiresome age--used to love to quote Frank Zappa at moments like this, and it is with Mike in mind that I (as an unabashed Zappa fan of my own) offer this Frank-ism in parting:

Do you love it?

Do you hate it?

There it is,

The way you made it.

What is it with people named Bob?

And so over at Mike's place there has been a bit of back-and-forth between MBV and this Bob Nicholson character, who originally penned this anti-NRA hitpiece.  Mike gave him one of his nearly-patented responses, and somewhat unusually, this time he got a reply back.  To which Mike volleyed, bringing us to today, with Nicholson attempting what might be called a "who, me?" tactic to dismiss and avoid.

Ol' Bob offers us all the smarmy confidences of the professional Astroturfer, with the added narcissism that comes from thinking you're the smartest guy in the room because you have a professional license.  He goes to lengths to make sure we know he's one of us--in just exactly the sort of loudly self-outing way that only the completely tone-deaf can manage--even as he repeatedly condescends to the simplistic projections of himself that he has somehow convinced himself that we are.

Sadly, you know the type.  They're coming out of the woodwork again.

Anyway, he must have been a little flustered as he concluded his most recent facile attempt to dismiss Mike, as his ability to spell started to crack a bit there at the end.  No matter.  He'd have to work a lot harder at bad mechanics to get me to look past the inherent chutzpah of his content here:

"I beleive that thothing I supported infringes on rights. You disagree. Fine we will leave it there."

Oh Bob, please do piss up a rope, willya?  We both know perfectly well that you won't "leave it there".  You toss that phrase out there like you expect others to believe you mean it, but you don't.  See, the one thing--the one, single, solitary, only thing that free people require, in the absence of having actually harmed someone, is to be left in peace, unmolested.  And that is the one thing that you absolutely will not do, no matter what sort of sophist drivel you may spout to the contrary.  You will continue to agitate for the forcible prior-restraint violation of untold masses of people who have not harmed anyone.  Violation that, whether you choose to admit it or not, will be carried out with all the fervor, sanctimony, abuse, and blowback of the functionally identical War On (Some) Drugs.  At the point of the government's guns.

The government's guns, Bob.  You know how you thought you were being so smart in trying to chide Mike for calling you a "collectivist"?  Well, it's hard to get more functionally collective than forcibly imposing your political will--in the form of total State control over the exchange of private property between individuals engaged in peaceful commerce--with government "gun cops" running naughty-and-nice list operations.

Yes, Bob, you're a collectivist.  (Sadly, most people are, so don't let it get you down too much--but you do need to own that.)

You also need--seriously--to let go of these delusions you have, that you understand either the people you claim yourself to be among, or the people whose stank you are pimping.  You don't.  You think you do, but you don't.  The former can see right through what David Codrea calls your "big but", and the latter, giving you benefit of the doubt by presuming you are earnest-and-merely-stupid rather than a willfully contributing Astroturfer for them, ...well, they are playing you and your desire to make nice like a cheap accordion.  Seriously, if you actually think that the NRA represents gunnies, or that resistance to gun control is somehow about the prurience of protecting a hobby, or that MBV is somehow agitating for conflict rather than trying to prevent it, or that anything that the disarmament crowd wants is in any way about protecting life, liberty, and property:  your ignorance is weapons-grade.

You may think you want to live in the world you ask for, Bob.  But you don't.  Maybe you think that you can violate people just a little bit, no harm done, and that's the end of the matter.  Especially if some of those people are vulgar and unwashed, or (even worse) uppity.  And it's something that you're okay with, so forcing it on others must be okay too--even if they've not harmed anyone.  (Yet.)

It's not like they'll ever come for you, after all.  You're a model citizen.  (No, seriously, you're exactly what the Establishment wants.)  You think all the right things.  You haven't harmed anyone (ahem), or even broken any laws.  You're safe.

Right?

Bummed for David.

I learned this morning, first from David himself on Facebook, and then again via...everyone else, that he has now had to follow through on his promise to leave the new Gottlieb-controlled JPFO, if it ever got to the point where he felt censored in writing content.

Gives me no joy to hear it, but it sounds like that's exactly what happened.  (Yes, I understand that the backbreaking straw was at KABA, not JPFO, but I cannot fault Codrea for recognizing the very clear writing on the wall.)

Well, there it is, then.  I can't say it's a surprise, but I suppose I did want to be proven at least a little wrong at least a little...or at least a little longer.  In the end, that didn't take long at all, and that just makes me bummed for David. 

I can say this:  Codrea has handled this whole unfortunate affair with a considerable amount of class, and has reaffirmed for me why he is one of the lasting giants of gun rights.  Long may he ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth.

I never knew him personally, but from what I understand, I do suspect Aaron would have backed him on this.

Nicely done.

From the sound of it, at any rate.  The Washington event seems to have gone well, with the point made even if others now wish like hell to ignore it.  I liked particularly the improvisation of heading over to the governor's mansion in response to the tyrants' play of doing what they supposedly never do:  lock the doors to the legislative galleries.

I'm under no delusion that this will either sate the appetites of the disarmament crowd, nor that it will result in any meaningful improvement in the political process.  However, the group did what they set out to do, and people saw them do it.  And they seemed to do it with class and style, as well.

With any luck, at least a few people will not be able to unsee what they did, either. 

It's hard to express...

...how much I want to see Mike Vanderboegh return, healthy and free, and having made his point.

Sure, I've got my own points of disagreement with MBV, but I can't help but admire many of the things he does and the reasons he does them.  His "in your face" crusade of the last several years is simply inspiring, even when it seems to be pissing up a rope or involving (what seem to me) pointlessly risky actions.

I've said before that I'm torn on the idea of appealing to Leviathan's institutions, in the hope that Leviathan might restrain the excesses of Leviathan.  And a part of me sees this February 7th event as just that.  But it's not just that, either, and it's somewhere in the "not just that" that Mike works his unique form of magic.  He seems to have figured out how to push people's limits right up to the point of crossing over into actual stupidity, without ever going over the line on anything important. He also seems very effective at reaching invested minarchists on something crucially important, that I would think makes the point against minarchism in and of itself.  And my word, but he's good at this.  He's the firebrand that at once holds back the truly excessive and stupid, and yet scares the polypragmatoi in a way they cannot ignore or marginalize.  Both ways!*  And I cannot help but perceive that this is effectively galvanizing exactly the demographic that it needs to--bit by bit, day by day, headline by headline, mind by mind.  I'm not sure the value of this is really calculable. 

Which, of course, makes me anxious for his safe return.  (Equally-impressive-in-his-own-role David Codrea probably said it best.)  I don't think I doubt the intent of the Washington folks that Mike is going to assist;  from what (little) I have seen they seem to be more principled than reckless, and December's "I Will Not Comply" rally seemed to come across as at least a qualified success.

Still.  These are not nice people that are getting poked with a stick on Saturday, and even worse, they are people that are widely legitimized to have power over people's lives.  (That Leviathan problem again.)  So I truly don't know what I think will happen.

But I know what I want to happen.  I want Mike around for as long as possible.  It's not for me--what he did for me, he did long ago--but because I see his continuing effect on new people, and I think we need as much of that as we can get.



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*  And how bitter an irony is this?  In my book, with my definitions, this makes Mike the ne plus ultra of actual compromise, of actual pragmatism;  to the extent that there is any honor left available in either of these words, Mike has been living it.  (I'd like to think that he might forgive me by understanding how much of a compliment I actually mean that as.)

Vanderboegh behind enemy lines. Godspeed, Mike.

The man is dedicated to his mission, and although I truly don't know if I think it's the best play, he fully deserves the Big Brass Balls moniker for doing it--at considerable personal risk.

Since the firearm and magazine registration act went into effect on 1 January 2014, state authorities have elected not to enforce the law when faced with a non-compliance rate as high as 85%. since then, Connecticut firearm owners who refuse to obey a law that they believe is tyrannical and unconstitutional have been waiting for the other jackboot to drop.

It hasn't dropped because Governor Dannel Malloy very cynically wanted a second term. Now that he has it, the raids that his "Gun Czar" Mike Lawlor promised Ron Pinciaro and other firearm confiscationists can begin.

Mr. Vanderboegh is here to show solidarity with the Connecticut resistance and to urge them to stand fast in their promise of "We Will NOT Comply!" Armed civil disobedience, Mr. Vanderboegh believes, is the only course left open by the Governor's insistence upon enforcing a law that the Supreme Court has not yet ruled as constitutional.

Boy, do I wish him well.  The country needs people like him right now, and I continue to be amazed at his sincerity.  May he achieve the effect he is after--because all of the other alternative outcomes are far worse.

Vanderboegh the agitator.

It's encouraging to see an increasing amount of resistance that knows what it's about, and it's specifically heartening to see this man out in front again.  I certainly don't agree with Mike Vanderboegh on everything, but this is the very sort of basic bad attitude we could use a whole lot more of.


There is a transcript, here, but please do take the time to watch the video;  allowing for the usual sort of large-crowd speech semantic and vocal conventions, his performance is powerful and authentic. 

And, sadly, necessary.

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Note this important addendum to the speech.  I'm sure that some will seize on a mixup of dates to try and marginalize MBV's content, but that won't stop the message from getting to those it needs to get to.